ied
outside the realm of politics.

There were two daily newspapers published in the town,--one Republican,
which was called the _Carson Daily Appeal_, and the other Democratic,
called the _Evening Post_. There were no associated press dispatches,
although the telegraph had reached the Pacific Coast and the San
Francisco papers had the benefit of that great purveyor of news.

The proprietor of the plant of the Republican paper was an old Minnesota
man, and a friend of mine, with whom I frequently came in contact, both
in a business and social way. Under this condition of things, you may
imagine my surprise and consternation when I tell you that one day he
rushed into my office in a great state of excitement, and told me that
his editor had left him and gone to San Francisco, and that he could not
keep his paper going unless I would run it until he could arrange for
another editor, adding that a failure to publish it for a single day
would ruin him. At first I looked upon the proposition as utterly out of
the question, and said: "How can I edit a Republican newspaper, when I
am at swords' points with everything they believe and advocate?" It was
with him, however, "a groundhog case," as we used to call such
imperative occasions. He _had_ to get him, as he was out of meat. He was
persistent in his demands, and as the negotiations progressed, I began
to look upon the matter as a good joke, and finally promised that I
would undertake to keep the paper going if he would swear that he would
never disclose my identity, which condition he promised faithfully to
observe.

It was a matter that admitted of no delay. I had to prepare a column and
a half of editorial that night for the next morning's issue. What I
wrote about, I don't pretend to remember, but it was well received, and
its Republican orthodoxy was never questioned, and I repeated the dose
daily for some time with the same success, growing more and more violent
in my attacks on the Democracy in each successive issue. Carson was a
small town, and, as the old editor was missed by his friends, public
curiosity increased as to who had succeeded him, and I enrolled myself
among the guessers, and improved every occasion to criticise publicly
the editorials. It soon became very tiresome and difficult to maintain
my ground, with politics as the sole text for my editorials, and as news
was very scarce, I sought relief in any channel that opened a way. A
great race took plac